Whistling Shade

I've been itching to bring some drama to Whistling Shade. No, not that kind of drama. Theater drama. But writing theater reviews for a quarterly publication is a foredoomed endeavor. No show I could watch and review by the submission deadline would still be playing by the publication date. I mean, even Triple Espresso closed. And so I did the only thing a civic-minded theater-lover could.

Dr. Who had the TARDIS; Mr. Peabody and Sherman had the Way-Back; I have The Theater Machine, a white 1996 Toyota Corolla uniquely suited to two things: running into stationary objects and time travel. Astride this trusty steed I will travel forward in time, view theatrical productions around the Twin Cities, and then come back and tell you if the production was any good. Is any good. Will be any good.

In actuality, I did my research through old-fashioned legwork. I assembled a list of productions coming up during the time-frame covered by this issue of Whistling Shade. I picked one and did some research on it and its author. Now I'm bringing that page-turningly interesting information to you. What I'm aiming for is less a review, or even a preview, of a particular production, but more of a literary analysis of the play being produced. So if I pique your interest enough to go to the show, you'll be better informed about what you're going to see-which makes the experience that much richer.

For our first outing together in the Theater Machine, we journey into a disturbing comedy about love-just not the love you might be expecting.

The production: November 7-23 at The Neighborhood House, 179 Robie St. East, St. Paul

When How I Learned to Drive won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for drama, Paula Vogel appeared on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, where interviewer Elizabeth Farnsworth asked the question New York audiences had been asking for the past year: "What was your inspiration for this? Why did you want to make it more a love story than something that people would be horrified by?"

Maybe not exactly the question audiences had been asking. Because many were horrified by How I Learned to Drive, precisely because Vogel frames it as a love story.

The love is between ostensible main character Li'l Bit and Peck, a married man old enough to be her father. From their first scene together, despite the comedic timing of the dialogue, the viewer suffers unnamable discomfort, something that goes beyond age difference and adultery. When Li'l Bit calls Peck "Uncle Peck" at the end of the scene, the dread earns a name, and the audience realizes they are in dangerous waters: a comedy about child sexual abuse.

Vogel was adamant about writing How I Learned to Drive as a comedy. When she wrote the play in the mid '90s, adult-survivors-of-child-abuse movies and TV shows were enjoying a vogue. According to the formula, the victim finds her voice and lays the blame for her suffering at the feet of relatives and community members who did nothing to end her torment. Vogel rejected this formula.

I wanted to do this in a very gentle way because I have been dissatisfied looking at the television movie of the week approach... I also feel that having watched a kind of climate of victimization occur ... I sometimes feel that being in that kind of mind-set of victimization causes almost as much trauma as the original abuse.

Vogel hypothesizes that, while survivors of abuse are victims in the literal sense, the glut of movies-of-the-week were showing them as perpetual victims unable to move beyond identifying as "victims of abuse". Vogel wanted to explore a more complex reaction to abuse that would challenge audiences to rethink their understanding of "victimhood".

She was also determined to paint a nuanced portrait of the abuser. In her NewsHour interview, she states, "[I]t's a mistake to demonize the people who hurt us, and that's how I wanted to approach the play."

And so we have Peck, who is not a demon but a deeply scarred and messed-up man. Vogel explores the roots of Peck's pedophilia, his struggle against it, and his feelings for Li'l Bit-feelings that would bring a tear of joy to the romantics in the audience, had Li'l Bit not been eleven when their relationship began. Peck is a disturbing man (in the play's premier at the Vineyard Theatre, Peck was played by David Morse, whom my wife calls "that one creepy guy"). But he is the only member of Li'l Bit's family who treats her with consistent kindness, and who, being an outsider himself, understands her disassociation from the world she's growing up in. The fact that his abuse created the majority of the disassociation only complicates the relationship further.

On one level, Li'l Bit is fully aware of the inappropriateness of her relationship with Peck.

PECK: What are we doing? (Li'l Bit doesn't answer.) We're just going out to dinner.

PECK: I'm not mad. It's just that I thought you...understood me. I think you're the only one who does.

PECK: Have I forced you to do anything? (There is a long pause as Li'l Bit tries to get sober enough to think this through.)

But on another level, because the molestation began at such an early age, she has difficulty envisioning an "appropriate" life. She knows, for instance, that she should have boyfriends her own age, but she can't break free from Peck, who's essentially been her "boyfriend" since before puberty.

Li'l Bit remains a cipher through the play's end. We know that she drinks herself out of college, but we see little else of how Peck's abuse affects her. I called Li'l Bit the "ostensible main character"; although most reviewers and analysts frame her as such, we actually learn more about Peck. This is How I Learned to Drive's weakness: Vogel's quest to paint a sympathetic picture of an abuser ends up overshadowing the abused; Li'l Bit may not be a weepy movie-of-the-week victim, but she's not much of anything else, either.

How I Learned to Drive is a difficult play for participants on both sides of the curtain. Staging it requires a deft and subtle approach to ensure that its challenges are met head-on, but that the disturbing themes don't engulf the comedic dialogue. We'll see how Theatre Unbound goes about making sure that audience members leave the theater feeling vastly entertained-and utterly unsure that's a good thing.

The Theater Machine

by Eli Effinger-Weintraub